The purpose of this session was to do our own re-creation of a Calvin Klein campaign montage image. We all photographed each other individually which we would then edit together on Photoshop to create a panoramic group shot. We had to consider everyones poses and who they were stood next to in the line up as to what we were going to show of ourselves.
The set up we had was the subject stood central, with the beauty dish (reading f16) central on to the face, with black reflectors to add darker shadows to each side of the subject so 1 reflector at either side, then had 2 large soft boxes (reading f11) lighting up the back ground to make it an even white. We adjusted the height of the camera on the tripod and set it to cover the wide range of different heights of the people within the class.
We put a marker on the floor so that everyone stood in the exact same place when shooting. We shot quite a few poses/expressions for each person then selected the best one (technically and as an image of that personality) to edit together for the montage.

The set up (taken on 5D mk iii):

Image on screen we were looking at as inspiration for the shoot

Soft boxes to light the background

Beauty dish

Phase One camera

Setting up…

First we tried it without the black reflectors but decided it looked better with them…

Beauty dish to the right side at first…

…But we wanted it central so it was even on the subject

Now we’re ready to add the back lights!

Ready!

Test shots…

Ready to shoot on the Phase One!

We used the Phase One camera and I found it tricky to know what buttons were for what but once I shot a few times on it I managed to get the hang of it. However I would still like some more experience on this type of camera. I shall research this camera and it’s functions and then hopefully shoot again on it in future, to get a proper idea of what it means to shoot on Phase One.

When editing the montage together I used a mixture of the Pen tool and the Magic wand tool. I had to watch things when putting each of the different images together:

Correct sense of scale for each person so it looks realistic

That the background colour is all even white (so having to cut each person out individually and put them together on a white back ground on Photoshop)

That when sizing each person up or down I was holding the Shift key so they didn’t distort

That each image had the same brightness, contrast and white balance

That when placing some people in front of others – through positioning the Layers either on top of or below others – that shading using the dodge/burn tool was done correctly making it appear as if they were all originally shot at the same time with the same lighting

Here are the final results:

Creating a montage – shooting on Phase One, editing on Photoshop

I’m happy with my editing and results because by using the dodge and burn tools it’s enabled me to make the images put together look more 3D rather than flat.